Caught Lying: Trump Administration Drops Citizenship Question from Census

Statement of Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn

Today’s decision by the government to move forward with printing the 2020 Census forms without the citizenship question is a victory for a fair and accurate 2020 Census count. The Trump administration’s lies about the need for a citizenship question were suspect from the outset but they were laid bare by the facts brought to light in the documents of the GOP’s top mapmaker Thomas Hofeller. Chief Justice Roberts joined by four other justices, rightly stated that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s explanation for adding the question was “contrived.”

The Hofeller emails and reports that Common Cause attorneys received in the North Carolina gerrymander state challenge, Common Cause v. Lewis,  revealed the real reasons for the citizenship question in the mapmaker’s own word – to make redistricting “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’

Suspending the citizenship question is a step in the right direction.

Statement of Keshia Morris, Common Cause Census Project Manager

Common Cause and other groups will continue to fight for an accurate count at the state and local level. We must continue to work to overcome the fears created in immigrant communities by the cynical, partisan and racist attempt to add the citizenship question to the census. We still need to pour every ounce of energy into mobilizing every neighbor and all communities to complete the 2020 Census – we cannot allow these partisan attempts to politicize the 2020 Census deter a full count of every person in the United States as called for in the Constitution.